"Lynx´s Story" by Travis W. Herring

“Easy there,” Alexandra said, her hands up to either side.  “No need to get violent…”

“Violent?  I ain’t begun to get violent on ye.”  Across the room, Beto was holding a gun on her.  A Hikari Sulu sliver gun, one pull of the trigger would send ten 9mm slivers of metal across the room at her at just under sonic speeds, turning Alexandra’s insides into so much once-living soup.  He’d produced it moments before, after speaking with Davian.

“Davian,” Alex asked calmly, “What seems to be the problem here?”

The Greek she was addressing had leaned his shoulder against the wall, eyeing her casually from across the nearly empty bedroom.  The entire flat was like this, the wallboards peeling from lack of maintenance.  They were in an abandoned building on London’s East Side.  No one used the place, so they took it over for meetings.  Beto, or Roberto, as he was named on his birth certificate, had called it at the last minute, requiring all the upper members of Davian’s crew come here immediately.  And now, this.

“Beto seems to think you’re an informant for Plod,” Davian said.  He raised an eyebrow at the Brazilian holding the sliver gun.  “Unless you’ve got some sort of counter, I might start to believe him.”

“She IS an informant!” Beto snarled. He looked around at the other leaders of their little organization.  Roz, the black fellow from Christchurch who swore like the proverbial sailor, Clicker, whose real name was lost behind some long, pointless story that explained where he got his name, and Malcolm, whose speech patterns were so effeminate that calling him a ponce would have been a compliment.  All three of them were merely staring daggers at everyone involved.

Davian waved a hand.  “Shut up, Beto.  Let her answer for herself.  It won’t be the first time one of their people made in here, but Alex has been with us for a while, so she at least deserves a chance to defend herself.”

“Hembra de la mentira,” Beto muttered.  “We shouldn’t even let her SPEAK.”

“Beto…” Davian said warningly.  The Brazilian shut up instantly.  Still, he kept his weapon in line with her chest.

Alexandra forced herself to take a deep breath, avoiding the eyes of her angry assailant.  Keep your calm, and you’ll get out of this alive, she told herself.  Beto had been looking for ways to prove she was working against the group, and he thought he had a way.  Someone, somewhere, must’ve said something in the wrong ear.

“Davian,” she said in her most soothing voice, “why would I be working for Plod, eh?  You think I’d be taking money from drug deals if I were?  Don’t you think we’ve done enough things together that no cop would ever allow?”  She jutted her chin at Beto, ignoring the weapon in his hand.  “He’s been looking to get me out of here since I JOINED.”  She sneered.  “I think he’s just jealous that we’ve become so close.”

Davian snickered.  “None of that means you’re NOT working for Plod,” he said darkly.  He pushed off the wall and stepped to her and into Beto’s way.  He took her chin, lifting it and looking into her eyes.  Behind him, Beto moved to a better angle and leveled the weapon again.  “If you’re lying…”

“I’m not.”  Alexandra’s eyes flashed.  She was scared.  There was no way to hide that.  But her true affiliations could not be seen there.  As far as Davian was concerned, the seed of doubt had been planted, and Alex knew where he would land, should it come down to a choice between her and the hotheaded Brazilian, no matter HOW long they’d known each other before she came along.

Davian turned and waved a hand at Beto.  “Put that thing away.”

“But…” Beto began.

“I said, put it away.”  Davian turned from Alex and glared at his companion, forcing him through sheer willpower to lower his weapon.  “Besides, you fire that thing and you’ll have every member of Plod on our arses before the day is over.  You never know WHERE those damn slivers will stop.”  There’d been an incident the other day with a fellow in a subway car firing a sliver gun in self-defense and killing two innocent bystanders, three cars down.

Beto glared at Alexandra for a moment longer and holstered his weapon.  “She’s a spy for the Police, Davian.   You mark my words.”

“I’ll mark your words when you can find some kind of proof, Beto.  Until then, you keep your bloody mouth shut, you hear me?”

The Brazilian met his friend’s eyes for a moment and then looked away, nodding.  When he looked back up, hatred glittered in his eyes as he met Alexandra’s.  A challenge had been laid and he was going to prove it if it was the last thing he did.

Davian reached up to caress Alexandra’s cheek, a pleasant smile on his attractive features.  His hand clenched, and he had her by the jawbone a half-second later.  “If he turns out to be telling the truth,” he said harshly, no mercy in his eyes, “you will wish we had never met.  And it won’t matter that you’ve been the best shag I’ve had in years.”  His eyes grew somewhat creased around the edges, and he smiled, letting her go.

Alex reached up and massaged her chin.  Davian was not joking.  The last time he’d found someone was giving information to the police, he’d had the man set to by wild dogs.  By the time he’d died, most of him had been on the floor around his bleeding corpse, if not in the dogs’ stomachs.  She swallowed, hard.  This was getting too close.  She’d have to watch herself the next time it came to check in.

Davian turned and told Beto and the others to leave.  Malcolm spent an extra moment smoking his cigarette before turning to go.  Clicker and Roz left without comment.  They did not care about the power struggles in Davian’s little clique, so long as they got paid.  After all, they had dosh to hand out on a regular basis, and so long as it kept flowing, they would be fine, even if Davian and the rest of his crew went under.  Malcolm, however, had a job as an accountant.  His role was to wash the money that came through.  Any connection to him, no matter how small, and he was sunk.  He flung his expended smoke stick to the ground, a concerned look on his face when he finally DID leave.

“Beto, get back out there and do your job.  Alex, you know what you have to do, so go do it.”  Davian looked at the two of them, waiting expectantly.  When neither made a motion to leave, he yelled, “Get!”

Both moved for the door at the same time.  Beto got there first.  He waited in the stairwell for her.  It was the only one safe enough for them to use.  Davian had a thing for the third floor, and had long ago set booby traps in the others, just in case someone DID manage to get into his organization.

“I will expose you for what you are,” the Brazilian promised when Alex stepped in. 

She stopped, looking him in the eye.  “And when you do,” she said, “I’m going to be right there, laughing at you.”  Brushing past him, she headed down the stairs.  She’d have to watch him from now on…

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Two weeks.  Two weeks more and they’d bust Davian and take everything he had planned down the shithole with him.  Beto had been watching her like a hawk, and even Malcolm wasn’t being as talkative as he had been.  She’d learned more about the group’s financial misleadings from him than anyone else ever assigned to this project, living or dead.  Considering that the only other living individual to have managed to get into Davian’s little clique was currently residing in a heavily secured trauma ward, most of his memories gone along with a good chunk of brain tended to mean she was riding a thin line.

Then again, she HAD passed the lie detector test Davian had set up for her when he’d first approached the gang.  She WASN’T an employee for Plod, and she wasn’t actually working for them, either.  Alexandra had a bone to pick with Davian and his crew, so she didn’t care who paid the bills.  That it was a private detective working FOR Plod in this case only made her lie that much easier.  She honestly did not know who gave her the money she was supposedly handing the gang when she did turn over the ‘profits’ from her sector.

It was a long story, but not one she wasn’t willing to tell a judge.  She’d been asked if she would be willing to help the Police (known as Plod by most who did not serve in that esteemed number) track down a known and highly wanted fugitive of the law.  It was said that he had been the person responsible, ultimately, for her father’s death three years prior.  Davian Moriceau had been running a drug running and gun smuggling operation in London for several years, but no one had ever been able to pin him on any charges.  He walked free every time, the evidence either disappearing, or the witnesses too cowed to speak when on the stand.

No more.  Plod had finally gotten smart to their method of inserting spies into Davian’s organization.  He’d grown paranoid enough about it to start lie detector tests on his new hopefuls, and those who failed were never heard from again.  Alexandra had taken hers inside an old storage croft, once used to house wheat over the winter.

“One misstep,” Davian had said when he’d been hooking her up to the machine, “and this place explodes from its own heat.”  There’d been a crop of exploding storage sheds that winter.  The news put it down to the fact that old wheat moulders and eventually becomes unstable unless sifted through on occasion.  The farms around London hadn’t actually had a crop in nearly half a century.  So no one worried when one occasionally caught fire and burned down.  They were always out in an unused corner of an old lot anyway, and no one was ever hurt when it happened…

Alex had passed with flying colors.  “No,” she said, “I don’t work for Plod in any way, shape or form.  No, I’m not getting money from them.  No, I’m not reporting your activities to them, either.”

Davian had accepted her into his clique and taken her to bed that night, just to prove who was boss.  Sleeping with the man who had employed the thug who shot her father over a woman’s carry bag rankled her somewhat fierce, but knowing that she would have the pleasure of watching him go to prison for the rest of his life for it made her grit her teeth and pull through.

She’d since found that it was Beto who had been the thug that morning who had shot him.  He had been inside, picking up a delivery from one of their more difficult to identify agents and a sudden urge to cause trouble had seen him stealing a woman’s carry bag and racing off with it.  When Edward Harkett, Beat Officer for the London City Police, had stepped around the corner into his path, Beto had taken out a small bored pistol and shot him three times rather than try to outrun him.

Edward died on the spot, ambulances unable to get to the scene due to an immense pileup that took place just down the road when Beto fired at another police car and killed the officer inside.

Alex stepped into the small bookshop where she ostensibly went to meet with an informant who kept her abreast of Plod’s investigation into Davian.  The main reason she’d finally been accepted into the gang was because she’d shown Davian an intense hatred for all things police, thanks to her father.  That she happened to know quite a few cops and could occasionally chat one up about the murder investigation regarding her father had seen her through and into their confidence.

No, she did not hold it against Davian that it had been he who paid Beto.  Yes, she had a problem with Beto, but that was something they could deal with privately.

In order to prove her loyalty, Davian had forced her into bed with him, time and again, until it became such a common occurrence that she began to stop thinking of it as rape and began to imagine the various ways the Greek would be tortured once he was in jail.  Greeks were known butt-huggers in Plod.  They’d make sure he was jailed with some of the worst offenders known.

Inside the shop, her contact awaited.  An old man who supposedly had an ear in the Police department and who gave her the funds she was supposedly getting from the region’s extortion  work sat behind the counter of the old book shop, looking up and scowling for the camera over the counter before she told him to turn it off.  They had to do that, since Davian had several netrunners in the region who checked occasionally to make sure his extortionists were doing their job.  She had taped several versions of her entrance to most of the shops before joining Davian’s group and the shop owners, fully in league with Plod’s investigation, had agreed to record them onto their tapes at random intervals to spoof Davian’s deckers.

Once the camera was turned off, the old man smiled at her, nodding as she came up to the counter and set her silver attaché case down.  She then leaned on it.  She looked tired.  There were bags under her eyes. 

“You alright?” he asked.

“I’m going to make it, I hope,” she replied, smiling.  “Beto is catching on, I think.  Either that, or he has a new contact who has told him the truth of the matter.  I think he might try to kill me sometime soon.”

“Then you had best be prepared,” the old man said concernedly.  “Beto is quite the assassin, so his rap sheet says.”  He tapped his brow over the cybernetic eye Alexandra knew he had.  It had a constant link to a nearby substation.  From there, he could feed her whatever information she needed to successfully fake an interaction with someone already in jail, or provide falsified information that Plod wanted him to have.  A lot of Davian’s work was with those already in prison, so it helped tremendously that she had someone who could fake her supposed conversations with them.

Davian had been getting misinformation for almost a month now, Alexandra setting him up for the big fall now that her associates behind the old man had decided to take him down.  She did not know exactly who it was she was working for, but knew from his information that it had to be someone high up in Scotland Yard.  Either way, she did not care, so long as Davian burned in hell when it was all over with and she got to personally put a bullet through Beto’s head.

That had been the agreement.  They would look the other way this time, seeing it as street justice for a fellow officer who had gone down in the line of duty.  This was how Alex knew it wasn’t the cops she was working for.  At least not directly.  They wouldn’t have agreed to such a thing.  Still, the money she was supposedly extorting from this street of merchants came in regularly, and she had ironclad alibis for every point in time she was away from the gang.

Apparently though, with Beto on the prowl, that wasn’t going to be enough.

“I need to do something about him,” she said after a moment had passed.  “Can you get me access to a gun?  I’m getting fed up with never having one, and Davian won’t let me touch one, since I spend the night in his bed.”  She raised an eyebrow.  “Apparently, one of his previous girlfriends nearly blew her own brains out one night playing with one.  I wonder why?”  Could it be because he was such a terrible partner and would never admit it?

“We’ll see what we can do about it,” the old man said.  He produced a silver attaché case, the numbers set to the same as those on the case she carried in with her.  Inside, she knew, was the amount of money she’d told them Davian expected from the merchants in this area this time around.  The amount was going up each time, so each time, she’d had to concoct reasons why the merchants couldn’t make it.  Davian expected resistance and grew paranoid when none was offered.  There was around 85% of what he wanted, which was enough to make him happy and to avoid conflict.  Something about it being close enough, but not complete.  The police parapsychologists had come up with that number.  “I will try to have something for you the next time you come by.”

Alexandra nodded and picked up the silver case.  Davian occasionally handed out the money to his underlings, providing a sort of safety net in case they ever considered turning informant.  Alex had a private account with nearly five thousand of Davian’s extorted pounds in a Swiss bank account that even Plod wasn’t aware of.  Why not keep some of it as a reward?  She wasn’t exactly getting danger pay for all this.

In fact, the only reason she kept informing on Davian and his crew and did not kill him every night in his sleep was the five hundred thousand pound award out for his arrest or capture.  His contact had promised her every penny of it when she’d agreed to this rather dangerous means of getting her revenge, and she’d taken him at face value.  After all, when it came down to it, there would be no record that she ever HAD been working with Plod, up until the last moment, when it would all seem like a random tip turned in (ultimately by HER) had led them to the very man and his crew they had been searching for, complete with all the evidence they needed to put him up for a VERY long time.

After that, she would think each night, staring at the ragged toy lynx she kept in her bed, she would disappear forever, becoming that which she had always most loved – a lynx biosculpt, in honor of her favorite toy.

The old man offered her a black device with a pair of silver prongs protruding out toward one another.  “Taser device,” he said quietly, sliding it across the counter.  “Non-lethal, but it will put someone down at up to twenty-five feet and give you time to run.  If Beto tries anything within that range, shoot him and run.  We’ll cover you as soon as you get to one of the safe houses.”

“I doubt he’ll be that close,” Alex said, shrugging.  Still, she pocketed the device, wrapping a hand around it and wondering if it would work when the time came.  She’d have to hope Beto’s outrage would overcome his paranoia and he would try at close range, like he’d shot her father.

“Check back in another day,” the old man said.  He nodded sagely.  “We should be ready to move by then.  Is the meeting still going to happen at Bletchley Park like they were saying?”

Alexandra nodded.

“Then that is where you will be relieved of your duty.  Until then, keep calm and stay alert.  Beto might try something before then, just to make sure you don’t cause a problem.”

The young woman nodded and pulled the case down off the counter, turning and heading out.  She waved a hand in goodbye.  “Turn the camera back on,” she said.

The bell above the door jingled as she stepped back out.

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